Golden Friends

You know the saying, "Make new friends, but keep the old; one is silver, the other gold"?  I consider Karen one of my "gold" friends.  We lived across the hall from each other during our first year of college at Morningside and even though I left after that first year, she and I continued our friendship via emails, phone calls and visits.  We've now been friends for almost 14 years (wowzers!) and have shared many special times together including our weddings and now becoming mothers. 
For the past six years Karen and her husband have lived in Rochester, NY (that is SO far away!) and I was only able to see her once (almost two years ago) during that time.  Thankfully, we've been able to keep up via all the great technology these days, but it is always so nice to see each other in person and have some good quality time together catching up.  This weekend we had the great pleasure of going to Houston and spending time with Karen and her family.  She had an endocrinology conference (she's about to be a full-fledged endocrinologist, how cool is she?) there and decided to make a family vacation out of it.  It was so great for our hubbies to finally meet and for our daughters to meet.  Julia and Brie became fast friends and it was so much fun watching them play and interact.  They are a couple of sweeties for sure!  I am very happy that Karen will soon be moving back to SD because we should be able to meet up over holidays more often (like we used to in the good ole days before they moved out to NY).  Isn't nice to have wonderful, "gold" friends in our lives?  I sure think so!

 Brie & Julia, chilling at the hotel :)

Fun at the park :)